Today feels like a pretty big milestone here at LitKicks, because we’ve finally relaunched our advertising program after a nine month rest. The original LitKicks Indie Writer’s Marketplace was a big success … in every way except financially. The ads looked great, but it takes a lot of time and attention to filter through prospective advertisers, edit text blurbs, edit graphics, handle payment, manage rotation schedules, etc. We had to shut the system down and look for a better way to …

Google’s much-talked-about print.google.com service is now available for beta testing. This free service allows you to search for keywords inside the texts of, theoretically, every book published in the world (although the reach isn’t quite that broad yet). The launch of this service isn’t getting big headlines anywhere, but we think it’s big news. As we wrote in December when Google first announced these plans, it’s controversial news as well. What do you think about this ambitious technology company …

Developers plan to build a retail and residential complex on the seafront that inspired James Joyce’s Ulysses. Historians, preservationists and Joyce fans are campaigning against the development — which proposes shops, apartments, restaurants and even a concert venue to be constructed along Scotsman’s Bay, Dun Laoghaire, outside Dublin.

Also, the Godrevy lighthouse — made famous by Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, is slated to be decommissioned by the lighthouse authority for England and Wales. Protesters argue that the change could …

Today was Memorial Day in the U.S. and we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the passing of Steve Mason. His name may not be familiar to many fans of contemporary poetry, but his dedication to giving a voice to those who survived the Vietnam War — and preserving the legacy of the those who did not — remains an inspiring example of the power of the written word. Considered the “poet laureate of Vietnam veterans” Mason often put the unimaginable into …

There are two full-page articles about poetry in today’s New York Times Book Review. The article on page 13 is a good example of what I like about the New York Times Book Review, and the one on page 12 demonstrates exactly what I hate about it.

Stephen Metcalf reviews a new Richard Wilbur collection on page 13, and this article serves one of the key purposes of a good and useful book review: it tells me what is unique about this book, and makes …

Just as there are endless possibilities for a story, poem or novel, the way a writer approaches their writing and develops the work can be equally varied. LitKicks member only-me posed this question:

“I sat down at my computer recently with the intention of writing a short story. I had no idea what it would be, I wanted to take an image and see where the thing went, where I took it.

Before I could start, a thought struck me and I ended up developing …

I’ve written before about hiphop lyrics as postmodern poetry. A few new tracks have grabbed my attention, like the sensitive Feel It In The Air by Beanie Sigel, a haunting tune studded with phrases of compressed ambiguity, as if the singer is buried under his own difficult choices: “My words still skippin through air/I know you can’t don’t won’t get it” … “This ain’t an us or a we or an I thing/It’s a good bad karma thing” … I’m not sure …

I’m sure many of us feel starved in a way, but LitKicks member Nole Knapek asks:

“Who is the best example of a ’starving artist’? I am undergoing the transition into this category. I have an unpublished novel that I’m going to take … make copies of it at Kinko’s, or wherever, and travel around the US distributing it for donations. Has anyone ever tried this before? If so, or if you have an opinion, please give me feedback.”

Whether you’re …

Let’s take a moment for Ismail Merchant, co-creator of some of the best literary films of our time, who died yesterday, May 25, in a London Hospital at age 68.

From ‘Shakespeare Wallah‘ in 1965 to ‘The Golden Bowl‘ in 2000, the team of Ismail Merchant, James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala produced films steeped in the greatness of Victorian and modern literary traditions, often adapted from books by authors like E. M. Forster and Henry James.

‘A Room With A …

Sometimes it’s fun to pick favorites out of arbitrary groupings. (No really, it is.) As such, I’ve made a list of 20 either/or statements (that are at least marginally literary), with the intention of seeing what your choices are. And that’s all you have to do — pick one thing out of each set. No need to explain your choices, just choose. In the end, I will of course take this data with me into the LitKicks Laboratory and chart …